Join the party! {Ultimate Blog Party 2012}

Woohoo! I love a good party! So I'm joining in the Ultimate Blog Party 2012. Thanks 5 Minutes for Mom, for having us all. We'll try to behave.

I am a little late. Can we call it fashionably late?

I'm Ellie. By way of getting to know me, I thought I'd share how we throw a party at our house. We like to have our parties in the summertime of course. Lots of good friends, family, and neighbors. (We're blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives.) Chicken and burgers on the grill, pony-keg and margaritas ready. Bubbles and sidewalk chalk and sprinkler for the kids, corn hole and badminton for the big people. Then, when the sun starts to set, Hubby starts a fire in the fire pit. So pull up your lawn chair, make a s'more, chat in the dark with a beer in hand. Happiness.


And then a little about me n' my blog. I lived all over - New England, the South, the Midwest - before settling in a 'burbish town in the northeast with my husband, two adorable but very mischevious boys (Bee is 2 and Zippy is 5), and two big dogs. If it was up to me, I would love to move back to my home state of Vermont and eat pints of Ben & Jerry's all day long, but Hubby is not down with the cold. Fortunately, we have a farm down the street from us so I still get to experience the smell of cows when the wind blows right. Ewww!

I started blogging regularly just a few months ago and I love, love, love writing. I often write about parenting strategies and handling all of those curve balls our kids throw at us. I'm a psychologist and spent several years in private practice as a child therapist. So although this is very much my personal blog, I often combine my personal experiences with my professional background when I write. (You can take the psychologist out of the armchair, but you can't take the armchair out of the psychologist...or something like that!) I also write about the ups, downs, and sweetness of motherhood and marriage as I experience it, about sleep problems and breastfeeding, about finding time for date nights and friends and myself. And, from time to time, I write about race - like how my experience of race has changed since becoming part of a multiracial family and watching my sons' identities unfold.

So have a margarita! (I am!) Join the party!

~Ellie